| February 26, 2018 | |||||||||
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Lyrics: Oh, ho, ho
Never been awake Oh, ho, ho I love my sunny day Oh, ho, ho Get It: Pilot’s cleverly titled From the Album of the Same Name is available at Amazon: Dances with Bass YouTube Channel:
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In 1974, the United States was trying to pull itself back together after a costly (and largely unsuccessful) war in Vietnam. We had just experienced military defeat for the first time, and our veterans found that they had come home, bent and broken, to a country that had inexplicably forsaken them. The last veterans came home in March of 1973 to a country that was trying to forget the wounds of the previous decade in Vietnam. Whereas the airwaves had been filled with songs of protest and upheaval, 1973 through 1980 would serve as a musical bandage for a country that didn’t quite know what to do with itself. The late 1960s and early 1970s songs of angst and distrust begat a string of sunny—sometimes, comically so—series of poppy, happy-go-lucky tunes that would eventually morph into disco. And despite some of the bad music that invaded the airwaves in the early 1970s, there was a deluge of sunny, guitar-driven pop songs that inevitably define the 1970s as my favorite decade for music. One such track that graces many Dances with Bass playlists is Magic from Scottish pop-rockers, Pilot, which appeared on the band’s cleverly titled debut record, From the Album of the Same Name. Pilot formed in 1973 in Edinburgh and were produced by none other than British prog rock god Alan Parsons. Interestingly (though not entirely surprisingly) Pilot vocalist David Paton and keyboardist and flautist¹ Billy Lyall were members of the Bay City Rollers prior to the Rollers’ breakthrough. When you watch the video for Magic, you’ll see why we don’t have any trouble envisioning these dudes chanting, “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y…Night!” Magic reached number 5 in the states and was certified gold. The band’s biggest success, however, was in the UK, where it charted hits with Magic, January, Call Me Round, and Just a Smile. By 1978, the magic was gone, so speak, as all five members of the band had moved onto other projects. The band would reunite in 2002 without Lyall, who died in 1989 at age 36 from AIDS-related complications. In 2014, Pilot released A Pilot Project, which was a tribute to Eric Woolfson, the primary vocalist for The Alan Parsons Project. Woolfson died in 2009 from cancer of the kidney. Give this one a spin, my babies and see if the sunny lyrics and bright melodies don’t put a bounce in your step on this random Sunday in February. ¹ We don’t get to use the word, flautist, often enough. To be clear, however, “flutist” is the word used most often by North Americans, but “flautist” is used by the rest of the world. Because Lyall was from Scotland, which our researchers tell us is not in North America, we are going with the “flautist.” Grammarist suggests using “flute-player” as a noncontroversial alternative, but we laugh in the face of controversy. Ha! Video: The official 1974 video for Magic is right here:
And almost unbelievably (or maybe not), Pilot scored a number 1 hit in the UK in 1974 with the saccharin-sweet January. The editors here at Dances with Bass are wondering if someone slipped a mickey into the Brits’ collective teacup that year?
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